


Helpfully Unhelpful

by raendown



Series: NaNoWriMo 2020 Drabbles [163]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-30
Updated: 2019-11-30
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:06:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 797
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21617320
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raendown/pseuds/raendown
Summary: Two rivals meet in the marketplace, one issues a challenge.
Relationships: Hatake Kakashi & Maito Gai | Might Guy
Series: NaNoWriMo 2020 Drabbles [163]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1533161
Comments: 6
Kudos: 53





	Helpfully Unhelpful

After what felt like a lifetime of being feared by the people in his own village Kakashi still wasn’t over the novelty of having old ladies smile at him and nod gratefully when he offered to carry their heavy looking groceries. It was nice to have his efforts appreciated rather than being forced to watch as women clutched their pearls and men warded him away like he was the devil incarnate. Now they handed their packages over with grateful sighs and told him what a good boy he was.

Just as the woman next to him had done, even going so far as to offer him a cookie, though he’d had to regretfully turned that down because of the mask. Kakashi was in quite the smashing good mood as he ambled jauntily along behind the woman whose groceries he was carrying, such a good mood that when he came upon Gai travelling in the opposite direction with an armload of packages he hailed the other man without thinking twice.

“Out to troll the market?” he asked, nodding to the shopping. Gai shook his head.

“No, my friend, I found this sweetest of young ladies all alone and offered to carry her burdens for her!” He nodded his head towards the ancient woman walking just behind him, booming out a laugh when she blushed.

“I haven’t been a young lady since before you were born, you scamp!”

The fact that Gai was able to get one arm out from underneath everything he was carrying would have been impressive enough even without the long pause just so he could offer the woman a thumbs up. Kakashi hummed and peeked sideways at his own companion.

“Funny, we seem to have had the same idea,” he said. “Look at the two of us being such good citizens.”

“Yosh! I will bet that I can help more people in this marketplace than you can!”

“Oh? Is that a challenge?” Kakashi grinned underneath the mask.

“But of course, my rival! I challenge you! I swear I will help more venerable elders in need than you or else I will do one thousand sit ups!”

Much as Kakashi so often professed to be the more calm and sane of the two he could not deny that the call of a good contest got his blood boiling. His eyes narrowed, already skipping back through his eidetic memory to recall all the faces he had seen this morning that he might offer help to. When Gai met his eyes again he was ready with a casual wink.

“You’re on!”

And so they began, dashing off in opposite directions through the marketplace, each speaking to every person they could find who might want some help carrying groceries or shopping or even just a lift for themselves on the back of a strong shinobi. Before long both were carrying veritable towers of merchandise carefully balanced to withstand the speed of their dashing about. It didn’t occur to either that any problems could possibly arise from this until they passed each other and Gai made a booming declaration of his own inevitable triumph.

“I am winning, rival, you will never catch up! Look at how many people I have helped!”

“You’re not helping anyone just dashing around with our things!” A feeble voice warbled from behind him. “Helping would be bringing them to where we were going!”

Startled, both Gai and Kakashi stopped to look behind themselves, only now realizing that they were followed by a long train of people waiting for their packages to reach the destination they had been offered help reaching. None of them looked very happy. Kakashi winced.

“Ah. We may have allowed ourselves to get a little carried away,” he admitted. Gai nodded sadly. Then he perked up with another bright grin.

“Yosh! I will bring all of these packages to where they are going before you or else I will run around the village two thousand times!” Without stopping to hear whether this new challenge had been accepted he was already dashing away and leaving his train of poor elderly in the dust.

“Well I can’t let him win,” Kakashi murmured to himself.

Then he jerked as someone’s purse bashed him on the back of the head.

“Darn tootin’ you can’t, you take our things home like you promised!”

“Yes ma’am!”

He set out right away just the same as Gai had. Pride was on the line here. After the last competition their score had been eighty-five to eighty-five and there was no way he would be letting Gai pull ahead of him again.

And also maybe he might have been a little afraid of what all these elders would do to him if their Sunday shopping did not arrive home in time.


End file.
